These appear to be everything that Tiny Homes often aren’t. Stable. Well built to code. Accessible. No lofts or too small spaces. Built for living, not for moving. Designed around people’s needs, not max size for going down the road. These seem like a very good solution.
These seem like small but real homes, not shanties. 
The unmentioned problem with shipping containers is condensation=mold.
Steel is highly conductive and adds no insulative value. It sweats and creates a mold hazard on insulation and walls or plywood lining. The plywood may be contaminated by hazardous chemicals.
Prefab housing made of steel was used widely by the military in WWII, both in Quonset huts and small two-bedroom units. My Navy brat ex-husband once vividly described the children’s daily chore of mopping the walls and ceilings for their mom. I spent time living in my aluminum pickup truck topper during a spell of unemployment and performed the same routine.
Shipping containers are best used for storage except in dry climates. RVs, mobile homes, or cargo trailers lined with solid insulation and customized, work better.
Oh I’m very familiar with the book, but other then bulldozing them to put up better suited structures for living in, the amount of work that would go into making a storage unit into an apartment would be outrageous, and if they aren’t going to put any of the things that people need to live, ie water, power, sewage, insulation, heating and cooling systems, ect , then you might as well give people tents and call it good enough because that would be a better solution
I live in an extremely non-hipster rural area, and shipping container structures are routinely used around here.
But they aren’t things that are expensively upgraded into luxury homes, they’re just unmodified shipping containers. Generally used as shed/storage/workshop space rather than living quarters.
Back in Beauty Point, my neighbour Phil the scientist had a small conventional house plus half a dozen shipping containers in the backyard. Each container was used as storage/laboratory space for a different discipline; he had a chemistry one, a paleontology one, etc.
People living in converted steel barns is also extremely common down here. Rural building codes are a lot looser than in the city.
Where I am now, Karel the neighbour has a small steel barn for her main living quarters, connected to a few shipping containers that she uses for storage, workshop and studio space. The only modification done to them [1] is some minimal wiring for lights and an added window in the studio.
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Edit to add:
[1] “Them” being the shipping containers. The steel barn is properly insulated, subdivided, plumbed and wired. This adds substantially to the cost of the barn, but it’s still much cheaper and quicker than building a conventional house.
They’ve apparently never heard of condos.
I think the attraction of a tiny house is that it is just that a house. A condo is basically just an apartment you own, and as such has all the drawbacks of an apartment – people stomping around in the apartment above, people below you complaining that you are stomping around, etc. That being said, long before there were tiny homes, there were trailer parks, but maybe they have too much of a lower class vibe for the tiny house crowd.
Incidentally, my house:
…was built by these folks:
Offsite prebuild, shipped here on a truck and dropped onto supporting piers.
#WTF?
In my area, there are 55+ parks, which look very nice. I’m not that age yet, but it seemed like an affordable retirement option - until I found out about the manufactured house and park pitfalls. Now the news has stories of the rising popularity of RV parks, due to the pandemic. However, newer RVs can get expensive in terms of initial cost, maintenance, fuel, and fees.
Around here, per anecdotes from retired people, RVs are being bought by people who are selling their big houses and using the equity to buy an RV to park on their son-in-law/younger sister/nephew’s property (in areas with no zoning laws).
One woman told me they’ll be helping with the home-schooling.
Is this the new multi-generational setup? Only time will tell.
The problem is the areas without those zoning laws are shrinking. Same thing with “unconventional” homes. In my old town, there were rules about minimum setback and the size of second structure on an existing property. Even though there was plenty of space in the yard for a tiny house or pod, it wasn’t possible.
When I was checking out RVs, I looked at the rules for parking. On top of the usual laws about having unregistered vehicles on a property, there were limits about how long the vehicle could be parked in my driveway! All it takes is for someone to complain or raise a “concern” about what neighbors are doing and pursue it until there’s a new restriction. This was in a place without an HOA, just an older neighborhood.
If I’d decided to live in one and remain in the same area, it would’ve meant constantly moving between state parks, casinos/gaming establishments, Walmart parking lots, and convention centers. That’s the only way to park in my county and avoid legal problems.
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